The Warsaw City Council was presented with a plan to bring a fine arts museum to downtown.
If the proposal is approved, it would go into the old city hall location on East Market Street.
Though it was discussed during Monday night’s Council meeting, you shouldn’t expect to see a quick decision made on the project. The Times Union reports Mayor Joe Thallemer says the building would need to first be available to the general public for sale before moving forward with the museum.
“My thought is that we certainly need to make that building available to the general public for sale before we make any kind of decision of what to do…depending on what type of interest is shown in the building, certainly it would make the most sense to our taxpayers to get that building back on the tax rolls. That, to me, would be my first goal, to try to expose that building to someone to redevelop it and put it back on the tax rolls.”
If no one showed interest in redeveloping the old city hall site, the possibility of it becoming the Lakeland Fine Art Museum would be discussed by the Council.
A Lakeland Art Association representative says Kosciusko County residents have to travel a minimum of 35 miles to the nearest fine arts museum in Elkhart or 50 miles to South Bend or 49 to Fort Wayne.
